Sewel Convention

Brendan O'Hara Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Brendan O’Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

I rise as one of those law-abiding, taxpaying Scots that the hon. Member for Gordon (Colin Clark) so clearly has such disdain for.

Regardless of what Government Members would have us believe, it is now clear to everyone that, following last week’s unprecedented power grab on the Scottish Parliament and its powers, the Conservative party and this Government have finally abandoned any pretence of having even the remotest commitment to devolution. That a power grab of this scale can be enacted by one Parliament over another demonstrates once and for all that the Tories have not the slightest interest in respecting the fundamental principles of devolution.

The contemptuous way in which Scottish democracy was dismissed by this place last week, with a 15-minute lecture from the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, the right hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr Lidington), was simply further proof that Scotland has no future in this United Kingdom and that the sooner we are free from it, the better. The Tories’ disgraceful disdain for the will of the Scottish people as expressed by the democratically elected Members of the Scottish Parliament shows the Tories in their true colours—anti-democratic, narrow-minded, backward-looking and insular. Let us never forget that these are people who, as devout British nationalists, were vehemently opposed to the creation of a Scottish Parliament from the outset.

For a century or more, the official Conservative party position was to oppose even the slightest devolution of political power from London to Scotland. Only when confronted with the inevitable, and in the face of overwhelming public opinion, did the Conservatives—publicly, at least—embrace the idea of a devolved Parliament in Edinburgh. They may have changed their tune but, like the leopard, they have not changed their spots, so it should not come as a surprise to anyone that, at the first opportunity, they are using Brexit as an excuse to roll back on the devolution settlement—a settlement that they never believed in—to try to claw back to London as many of the powers and competencies of the Scottish Parliament as possible.

Last week, the Secretary of State made the excuse of these not being “normal times”, as if these circumstances somehow justified him carrying out this power grab. What he of course failed to mention was that the UK Government’s own lawyers, when they recently went to the Supreme Court, said:

“Whether circumstances are ‘normal’ is a quintessential matter of political judgment for the Westminster Parliament.”

There we have it. The UK Government will decide what is and is not normal. They alone will decide what powers the Scottish Parliament has and what powers will be restricted for up to seven years, without that Parliament’s consent. Is there anyone so naive that they really believe that, having grabbed those powers for themselves, the UK Government will return them to Scotland after seven years? Not a chance.

No one should be in any doubt what is at stake here. Once the precedent is established that Westminster can overrule a majority vote in the Scottish Parliament whenever there is disagreement, a standard will have been set and the ground rules will have been established. It is my genuine fear that if we allow this to happen, it will be used by the Tories as a pretext to seize powers again and again and again, whenever it suits them. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) said, this is not about the SNP versus the Tory Government, because the SNP, the Labour party, the Greens and the Liberal Democrats in the Scottish Parliament all recognised that what the Tories were planning was nothing less than a power grab—an outrageous attack on the democratically elected Parliament of Scotland. Let me be clear: this is Scotland against the Tories. If that does nothing else, it should send a message to Downing Street and Dover House that their Tory power grab on our Parliament will not be tolerated by the people of Scotland.

Let no one in in this House be in any doubt that the people of Scotland are furious at what is taking place. We have heard much about how these 87 powers are to be returned directly to Holyrood, and only 24 are to be appropriated by Westminster. To me, that is akin to a burglar being caught breaking into someone’s house and defending himself by saying, “You should be grateful that I only nicked your telly.” It is an absolute nonsense of an argument. A power grab is a power grab is a power grab, whether it is one power, 24 or 111. The precedent will have been set, and that is why it has to be opposed. The theft of just one of Scotland’s powers is one too many.